Unnecessary Upper/Lower Textures

[Lutz]

Random question: what (if any) inefficiencies are introduced by assigning upper and lower textures to 1-sided linedefs and/or 2-sided linedefs on which the upper/lower textures are not visible? Does file size increase? Is the rendering algorithm less efficient? Or does it not matter in the slightest?

[Memfis]

I know that if you have several switch textures on a sidedef, only one of them will animate (maybe the upper one, don't remember).

[scifista42]

I once tested it and came to a conclusion that these unnecessary textures do not affect file size, that's all I can say.

What Memfis said is true, though. And yes, it's the upper texture that animates with priority.

[Gez]

File size will not increase unless your map format is UDMF.

Rendering should be entirely unaffected. The renderer looks at a column and check if it has to draw a texture, then look for what that texture is. If it doesn't have to draw a texture, it doesn't look up what texture has been set or not.

[Foxpup]

Not only does it not matter in the slightest (apart from switches), at least one editor automatically adds unnecessary upper and lower textures, presumably to avoid accidental flat bleeding or HOMs due to moving floors/ceilings.

[40oz]

I've actually been meaning to ask this for a while. Im really curious about this too. I'm hesitant to use a lower texture on a two sides line where the floor levels of the adjacent sectors are the same. I don't think it does anything but a part of me makes it feel sloppy when invisible textures aren't replaced with "-"

even though theres no visible evidence of it in game play. I think it happened on time when I found theres no easy way to monotexture an entire map or even a room when individual textures have already been selected for many of the lines.

[Lutz]

Cool, thanks all.

[Graf Zahl]

The only thing to be aware of is that if you use a texture on such a line that isn't used anywhere else, it might get precached by some ports without ever getting used, slightly increasing memory use.

Aside from that it will simply be ignored.